The former principal of the Academy of Dover, a charter school in Delaware, was sentenced to prison for embezzling school funds.
“Noel Rodriguez, the former principal of a Dover charter school, was sentenced to 13 months in prison and ordered to pay $145,480 in restitution.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Andrews handed down the sentence Friday in Wilmington.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty to one count of federal program theft in November.
According to court records and statements made in open court, between 2011 and 2014, while serving as principal of the Academy of Dover, Rodriguez embezzled $145,480 from the school.
The Department of Justice said he made personal expenses to four unauthorized credit cards that he opened in the name of the school, abusing the voucher program, and using the charter-school issued procurement credit card for his own personal purchases.
Rodriguez used the embezzled funds to purchase camping equipment, electronics, personal travel, and home improvement items, among other things.”
He got off with a lighter sentence than the charges he faced.
”In 2016, Rodriguez was indicted on four counts of federal program theft. Each count carried a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison, along with fines and restitution, the Department of Justice said at the time.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Conflict of Interest”
An interesting conflict
The public has become
For charter-scamming convict
Who figured us for dumb
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So a slap on the wrist and it’s SOP.
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Yeh, it’s interesting he was only “fined” for the amount he stole (if that is indeed all he stole)
And I’m sure he’ll get out after a few months for good behavior.
People have gotten far more time for drug use that hurt no one but themselves.
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He will also probably be sent to a prison camp for white collar criminals where there are no tattooed, muscle-bound, violent gang members or even fences. There’s just a painted line they are told they are not allowed to cross, and there are tennis courts and maybe even a golf course (that might belong to Trump — maybe). If they are good, they might get weekends off to cross the line and spend a couple of days away on R&R.
And did the judge bar him from owning and/or operating a corporate charter school for the rest of his life? If not, he could be back in business in a few months repeating the same crime.
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Whatever happened Gulen? I was reminded when my saw this…..just wondering………
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It would be useful to compare the crime/fraud statistics of charter school leaderships to public school leaderships’ and to general company leaderships’. While the absolute numbers are interesting, the useful measure would be relative to the number of charter schools (public schools, etc).
It seems to me, that a disproportionate number of charter schools are dirty. Could the reason be that charter schools use public money? So it would be interesting to see stats on crimes related public-private contracts (like military, postal, etc) and compare them to the crimes related to regular private businesses.
Do you guys know of these kinds of stats? Perhaps Mercedes Schneider did something already.
What if it turns out that 5 times as many charter schools commit crimes?
Stats made even for a single state or city would be already useful.
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